New Faces
by Jay Rock Kay
Summary: Commander John Shepard has been risen back from the dead to stop the mysterious Collectors. He should be focused on saving the rest of the human colonies in the Terminus Systems, but a talk with his best friend makes him start to doubt...


Commander John Shepard had better things to do than scrutinizing himself in the bathroom mirror of his new quarters. He had the dossiers for the Krogan Warlord Okeer and the convict Jack to fulfill. There was the message the Illusive Man gave about a Cerberus operative being tortured for information by Eclipse mercenaries. Speaking of mercs, Zaeed was starting to breathe down Shepard's neck about getting to Zorya and fulfilling his last contract. Oh, and there was the little thing about the Collectors stealing whole human colonies for God knows what and having to work with his old mad scientist "friends" Cerberus to do anything about it.

But there he was, eyes squinting over every detail of his face and prodding at it with his fingers. He knew Project Lazarus had extensive reconstruction done on him. Jacob graciously described him-his corpse-as being "meat and tubes.". Combat at Lazarus Station and Freedom's Progress showed that he was stronger, faster, more durable, quicker to heal, even his biotics were stronger than before. But he was also told that he was the same person, that the Illusive Man had wanted him exactly as he was before the Collectors destroyed the Normandy SR-1.

Then Garrus had to go and open his big mouth.

He was supposed to be resting in the Med-Bay-taking a rocket to one side of his face would take it out of anyone-but there he was, scuffling into the debrief room with a compress over the brunt of his scars asking how bad it looked with a mock sincere voice.

"Hell Garrus, you've always been ugly." Shepard said with a smirk. "Slap some face paint and no one will notice." Garrus laughed which turned into a groan.

"Please, don't make me laugh right now. _Damn_ that hurts." Garrus smiled through the pain, mandibles shooting away from his face. "Well, I was tired of getting all the girls and you not getting any, so I figured it was your turn." The smile faded away and squinted at Shepard.

"Something wrong, Garrus?"

"No, it's just...I knew it was you when I saw you and your Cerberus friends going up the bridge, but you looked..." Garrus mimed his fingers moving around his facial features, taking care not to touch his newly acquired and stinging scars. "...Different; and not in a 'I haven't seen you in years and half-delirious from exhaustion' way." Garrus saw the look in his friend's eyes, moved his hands away and scoffed. "Of course, some Turians think all humans look alike, so maybe I'm just not as progressive as I would like."

The two made some more small talk-trusting Cerberus, the mission against the Collectors, an idea Garrus had to modify the Normandy's cannons-as they walked to the elevator. Garrus went down to the Crew Deck to test and calibrate the main cannon for his idea and maybe get another round of painkillers from Dr. Chekwas while no one was looking.

Shepard went all the way up to his cabin, with the intent of reading the messages on his terminal without the earnest Kelly Chambers looking over his shoulder and giving him a psych exam. He walked straight past his desk and into the bathroom.

Sure enough, Garrus was right. His face was still recognizable, and the scars from his early awakening were still there (but starting to heal), but there are noticeable differences. His chin was less prominent, more sleeker and streamlined. His cheeks were sharper and more defined. His nose had a curved tip and was straighter, as if the times he broke his nose back on Earth had never happened, and just a bit thinner at the ridge. Even his hair seemed a bit darker and fuller.

It was like he was staring at the vid of his life, and some movie star with the same eyes and oval face was playing him instead. It was suddenly feeling harder to breathe. He sat the lid down on the toilet and sat and slammed his eyes shut. _Don't lose your head. Calm down. Think. _Maybe he was just seeing things? What if Garrus really was a little delirious and he was just making up differences now that he has the idea in his mind?

_Only one way to find out…_

Cerberus Operative Miranda Lawson was rather proud of herself. Since she went through decontamination and debrief after rescuing "Archangel," she had signed over Commander Shepard's patrol schedule for the next week, observed and filed her status reports on all essential personnel, and sent a personal status report to the Illusive Man concerning the previous mission-all ahead of schedule. She sat up from her desk and stretched out the kinks in her back, to go to the Mess Hall for some tea. It was no Earl Grey, but Gardner did have something that maybe closely resembled it.

The door to her office suddenly opened and, as if he heard her thinking of him, Commander Shepard walked in. She wasn't terribly surprised-from the files she examined of his exploits in the first Normandy, he made a habit of...making the rounds and getting to know his crew. It was a good sign that he was trying to do the same thing and find common ground with the organization that, to him, he was just fighting, but it did make it less likely she would ever get her tasks done ahead of schedule when he knocked on her door.

Then she noticed it-the way he stormed in, his fidgety hands, his shifting eyes. This was not a casual visit.

"Commander," she said, trying to keep an even keel of her voice, "is something wrong?"

"Did you...do something to me?"

Instinctively her hands moved to her hips as she crooked an eyebrow. "I did a lot of things to you-chiefly bring you back from the dead. Can you be more specific?"

"To my face?" She nodded and relaxed herself, sitting back down into her chair.

"Well, yes, of course. Your helmet kept your brain intact as you fell onto Alcheria, but not much else." She remembered when she first saw him when she was recovering his body from the Shadow Broker. She wasn't in hysterics like Doctor T'Soni, but ever since then she couldn't look at well-done meat the same way again. "I had to reconstruct your face almost entirely from scratch."

"But did you...change anything?"

Miranda sat her elbows on the table, chin meeting her hands, considering her words. "I was working under the parameters of making you as close to your original self as possible. However, it was clear that in using the cybernetics to heal your body that we were making you physically...better. In that regard I felt I could make...some minor improvements aesthetically as well."

The Commander seemed calm at first as he was processing her admission. Then his eyes seemed to turn ice cold.

"I liked my face, Miranda." He pinched the ridge of his nose, nostrils flaring. "It may not have been the most...classically attractive face ever, but it was _my_ face. What...what gave you the right?"

"What gave me the right to bring you back to life?"

"That's not the same and you know it," Shepard growled. Not said, growled. She hadn't seen him this angry since she killed Wilson at Lazarus Station. "What were the practical reasons of 'fixing' my face? What made that important to saving my life? You did it because you could, because you wanted to." The more he talked, the more her stomach tied itself in a knot.

"I…" Miranda suddenly found her throat to be very dry. "I just don't understand what the fuss is about-"

SLAM! The Commander's fists pounded onto her desk.

"Because I have to trust you! More than anyone else here, because you brought me back. What if that isn't the only change you made to me? You say you would have put a control chip in my head, but how do I know you didn't? Or something else? A tracking chip? A bug? A fail-safe bomb?" He leaned onto the desk with his fists, all the anger drained from his face. "I need to know that I am still me. That I'm still in control of my own actions. That I'm not just some pawn in a pet project."

Suddenly Miranda was eight years old again, cold hands that should have been anything but dispassionately inspecting and prodding at her like a science experiment...

"...You're right," she cracked through clenched teeth. She breathed in a deep breath, breathed out, tossing the old memory with it, and regained her calm. "We need to be able to trust each other if we are going to succeed in our mission. I meant what I said-we did everything possible to restart your brain patterns without changing anything about you, and the psych exam I gave you on your way to meet the Illusive Man confirmed it. Only difference is now you're physically more resilient and, well, a little more handsome than you were before.

"Is there anything I can do to help ease your mind?"

"I want access to every file you have on Project Lazarus." Miranda woke up her terminal and started typing onto her holo-display.

"Done. It's a big file, but very through on everything we did to bring you back to life."

"Thank you. And I want you to promise me something."

"Promise you what?"

"The next time something like that happens to me, and you have to bring me back from the dead? Keep my face as it is now." She stared at him as if he was suddenly riding a varren.

"Seriously?"

"As lung cancer used to be. I think I can get used to my face as it is now, but I don't think I can live through another sudden change."

She felt like laughing and the almost lost enough wherewithal to actually act upon it. "On the...astronomically low possibility that such an event was to happen, I promise I won't do any more cosmetic surgery."

He smiled then, genuine, and lifted himself back up from the desk as if nothing had happened. "Well, that's good then. That's a start. You can further prove it when we go to Lorek tomorrow to pick up your operative." He turned and walked, the door opening itself for him. As he started to step over the threshold, he stopped and looked at her with the biggest shit-eating grin on his face.

"And don't think I didn't notice you saying I'm 'more' handsome now."

"I...have no idea what you're talking about."

"So you thought I was handsome before?"

"You should go, Commander."

"How handsome do you think I am now?"

"Now I wish I threw in an 'off' switch."

"We'll be in orbit with Lorek by 0700 tomorrow. I want you ready at the armory by then." Shepard said and the door closed before she could wipe that stupid grin off his stupid handsome face.


End file.
